New study looks again at how alcohol influences attraction
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This should be fairly easy. My assumption has always been it doesn't affect our attraction, it suppresses our inhibitions. So anyone we're only somewhat attracted to and would generally not attempt to "romantically interact with" while sober may well be an option for such interaction while our inhibitions are lowered.
This isn't much different (other than social appropriateness) than someone being a violent drunk or a sex pest "only while drunk". They're absolutely those things to begin with but without alcohol manage to keep their socially inappropriate acts in check.
This isn't much different (other than social appropriateness) than someone being a violent drunk or a sex pest "only while drunk". They're absolutely those things to begin with but without alcohol manage to keep their socially inappropriate acts in check.
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"the effect is enhanced when subjects smoke cigarettes in addition to drinking alcohol"
yes.
yes.
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My favorite manifestation of this is how the resulting lowered inhibitions help people speak foreign languages more fluently. I can definitely attest that there’s a sweet spot in alcohol consumption where I’m much more likely to dip into my very bad Persian and French and vocabulary seems to come much more easily. Granted, it’s usually a hop and a skip until I stop being fluent in any language—including English.
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Yet another entry in the annals of "how can researchers get funding to get themselves and/or friends drunk and/or high.
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It's nice that "beer goggles" and "liquid courage" are now evidence-based terms.
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I'd be interested in seeing if there is any correlation with higher BAC levels and stronger attraction and/or confidence. Getting users simply to 0.07% BAC doesn't seem like a good test of real-world conditions.
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It may not change perceived attractiveness.. but it certainly changes the bar for acceptable attractiveness.. that person who you'd reject early in the evening looks good enough by the time the bar closes..
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Yeah, looking at the experiment, I wonder if being asked "would you like to meet them" for all of the people rated rather just having them pick four to meet and looking at if there was a larger divergence for the less attractively rated people would appear.
"More likely to hook up with someone thought less attractive" seems to still capture the essence of the "beer goggle" sentiment.
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I guess there might be quite a big ethical problem with researching higher BAC levels and the willingness to shag...
Not really sure any uni's ethics board would sign on that!!!
Informed consent can be a bit of a problem when excessive amounts of alcohol are involved...
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My assumption was always cultural, not physical, effects dictating the phenomena... the attraction "effect" is merely an excuse, as usual, when relating to alcohol. "Oh, I was so drunk so I must have thought X! Te he!" Nah, you just wanted an excuse to be involved with someone you normally wouldn't be. Seems simpler of an explanation at least.
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I found it interesting that the BAL target for the experiment seemed to be just under the legal threshold for intoxication (0.07%). I wonder if the finding would change if they exceeded that level - my recollection of this happening to college friends occured when they were decidedly more on the inebriated side of 0.08.
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Nicotine has interesting synergies with other chemicals. For example, it metabolizes caffeine more quickly leading to the classic “coffee and cigarettes” rush.
It can also increase skin sensitivity, which has obvious interplay with why people often think about it in sexual contexts.
That being said, on the whole it is a libido reducer.
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I'm on the side that says alcohol doesn't change ideas, but responses. The magic 8 ball in our brain suddenly gets the negative options blocked from being an appropriate response to the question "is this a good idea?"
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Let's say some of the photos are of somebody who resembles somebody socially affluent like a Kim Kardashian / Taylor Swift or otherwise looks "high maintenance". It seems reasonable to assume that the guy making these judgments about attractiveness also self-rates much lower and consequently says of such photos, "nope, not attractive" because subconsciously the guy sees himself as not in the running.
Post-alcohol though, maybe it's not beer goggles that come into play, but either confidence increased or a "screw it" attitude comes into play that being rejected still means nothing to lose and so in either case, alcohol has done its job.
Post-alcohol though, maybe it's not beer goggles that come into play, but either confidence increased or a "screw it" attitude comes into play that being rejected still means nothing to lose and so in either case, alcohol has done its job.
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Right this was my thought. It's not that it changed the actual attractiveness of the other person, but it changed the "do I sleep with them" question because it alters your decision making towards more impulsive.
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Honestly, the best way to sleep with a solid string of 9-10s is to have a reliable coke connection. Alcohol is very much amateur hour lol
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I think there's more to it than this. I have found that many of my emotions are amplified when I've had a bit. So perhaps the anti-inhibitory effect isn't just in the expression of emotions, it's also in the intensity of the feelings. Like, I grew up with an alcoholic mother. I know when she was sober, things would make her angry, but it wasn't just that she controlled herself, it was also that the intensity of her anger felt subjectively weaker when she was sober. Was she still angry? Yes, but it wasn't because she had tons of unexpressed violent ideations she just kept in check. Those things only occurred when her brain, on alcohol, wasn't able to feel proportionately angry about situations, because its inhibitor didn't stop at the place it normally did.
I'm sure for some people, they are fully cognizant of (or willfully disregard) the anti-inhibitory effect of alcohol on their emotions. Therefore, they are still responsible for it when they get so angry while drunk that they punch people, or when their attraction to the desired sex goes beyond where it normally does when sober.
But I still think it's an important distinction between 'you can normally just control your behavior even though you still feel that stuff' and 'you never actually feel that stuff in any comparable way normally so there's no behavior that even needs restraining.'
ETA: And I'm sure there's also people who also are merely inhibiting actions as well, and whose normal feelings are inappropriate but kept in check by society. I simply do not agree that every single person who behaves badly when drunk is only prevented because of societal checks.
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Well, the remark I wanted to do. You're not going to observe "beer goggles" with a beer or a glass of wine. Get your participants properly drunk first. I can tell for sure, from personal experience (and I know that's not statistically significant) that I will fall in love almost certainly when I reach a BAL ≥5 times that.. And that I will feel, given the occasion and when sober, that I might not have had complete clarity of mind at that point in time..
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And hopefully will have consumed enough alcohol to have forgotten about the earlier rejection.
I always understood that the effect was largely tied in with the probability of getting laid, so any set up where that probability hovers around 0% is probably measuring something else.
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Which is also a way the "what's available" effect isn't explicitly controlled for by the experiment.
Your frame of reference of attractiveness isn't only your personal preference, it is also relative by who you are interacting with (think the "Work 10" level of attractiveness, or even how Candide's view of his crush changed after he travelled, in Voltaire "Candide"). Basically, someone who is a "6" on your personal preference scale could look like a "8/9" if s/he is the most attractive person in the environment you are. Granted, a "0" will probably never be a "10", but the attractiveness scale you are using will still be shifting relative to who is "available/there".
On top of that, it has been shown that our (well, at least for "healthy women") feelings of disgust are reduced when we are horny. That is more than likely to impact the "acceptable attractiveness" threshold too!
Basically, controlling for the "what's available/acceptable attractiveness" effect when it comes to beer goggles, you get the following:
- you are in a bar, then your pool of options is the people in the bar, which will impact the "attractiveness" rating you will give to everyone;
- you are expecting to end the night with someone, which means you are somewhat horny, which reduce your threshold of attractiveness;
- the longer you stay, the more people will leave, which reduces the number of possibilities, which reshift your frame of reference of attractiveness;
- and the longer you stay, the more you drink, so the more drunk you get, the more it could decrease your "acceptable attractiveness" threshold.
In terms of variables to control for, you would get something like : "personal preferences", "number of people composing the crowd", "composition of the crowd in terms of attractiveness", "level of horniness", "alcohol-level", "time spent"
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Duh. How many people are in bars with breathalyzers? First you should find what the actual common BAC is. Then get people there.
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Hang on, you mean my undergrad degree was a clinical trial?
I should have been told I was in the control group ;-)
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In other words, it doesn't affect attractiveness. It affects the calibration on the "I'd hit that" meter.
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This 21-year old article from The Onion seems germane:
Teen Sex Linked To Drugs And Alcohol, Reports Center For Figuring Out Really Obvious Things
The report went on to state that some teens may actually seek out drugs and alcohol for the express purpose of lowering their inhibitions and facilitating sex—a phenomenon well known to parents and teens alike for countless generations.
“Teens are not only having sex drunk or high, but they’re also getting drunk or high to increase their chances of having sex,” Eckersley said. “Interestingly, we found that this phenomenon also occurs among adults, as well as among every population everywhere in the world that has ever existed since the dawn of time.”
Teen Sex Linked To Drugs And Alcohol, Reports Center For Figuring Out Really Obvious Things
The report went on to state that some teens may actually seek out drugs and alcohol for the express purpose of lowering their inhibitions and facilitating sex—a phenomenon well known to parents and teens alike for countless generations.
“Teens are not only having sex drunk or high, but they’re also getting drunk or high to increase their chances of having sex,” Eckersley said. “Interestingly, we found that this phenomenon also occurs among adults, as well as among every population everywhere in the world that has ever existed since the dawn of time.”
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wtf are "ARS CONTRIBUTORS" ? Give people actual writing credit.. this isn't some Dealmaster post shilling for clickthrough traffic where you have to hide the shame of the writer behind impersonal "ars staff" bylines to save their dignity (yes... i see you doing that).
You'd never treat someone like Siracusa this way, no reason Ivan Paul (whomever he is) deserves the anonymizer treatment.
You'd never treat someone like Siracusa this way, no reason Ivan Paul (whomever he is) deserves the anonymizer treatment.
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I think it is more what Hemingway said. “I drink to make other people more interesting.” Or often, for me at least, to just make them less annoying. To me the more interesting experiment would be, at differing levels of inebriation, to see whether people wanted to continue an interaction with someone after say 10 minutes.
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Nora Lenderbee
Ars Tribunus Militum
A pundit once said "Far more kisses begin with Budweiser than begin with Kay." (He was referring to the then current advertising by Kay jewelers.) I think he was spot-on.
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I won't claim to be an expert at making mistakes while drinking, it's all a bit hazy. But you don't make the kind of mistakes they're studying at 0.07. If they want to study "beer goggles" then they need to have their participants do some serious regret worthy drinking.
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It's not a case of beer goggles. It's a case of lowered inhibitions and standards, and you going for any opportunity that arises, finding yourself chewing your arm off in the morning, which the 'other' is draped across, to discreetly make your escape.
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I prefer to think of it as letting alcohol-based AI prune my decision-tree for me.
Occasionally the results are excellent.
Other times, mmmm...less than optimal.
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Nora Lenderbee
Ars Tribunus Militum
And as closing time approaches don't forget the Fear Of Missing Out that may contribute to the lowering of standards.
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The lenses in my beer googles are in backwards.
About every 3rd Sunday during the NFL season I'll spend the whole day at my usual pub drinking beer, eating wings, and watching football. At the beginning I'm well aware of all the attractive female customers and girls that work there ... and I do nothing because I'm very well aware I'm a pudgy, balding old man more than twice their age. But by the middle of the second game I've had at least 3 schooners of beer and I don't notice them at all any more. One of my favourites waitresses will smack me upside the head if I don't notice she has brought me another beer and I need to say, "Thank you".
About every 3rd Sunday during the NFL season I'll spend the whole day at my usual pub drinking beer, eating wings, and watching football. At the beginning I'm well aware of all the attractive female customers and girls that work there ... and I do nothing because I'm very well aware I'm a pudgy, balding old man more than twice their age. But by the middle of the second game I've had at least 3 schooners of beer and I don't notice them at all any more. One of my favourites waitresses will smack me upside the head if I don't notice she has brought me another beer and I need to say, "Thank you".
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A lot of bars in my town used to have wall-mounted breathalyzers.
Plug in a toonie or a couple of loonies, blow into a straw, then wait a few seconds for your reading to be displayed.
The problem was that too many young, barely legal, kids - and some older ones as well - would use the machine as part of a drinking game: let's see who can blow the highest.
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